The making of a mother
Two years of being a neurodivergent mother
behind every late diagnosed woman
is a little girl
who knew this world was never made for her
but could never explain why.
- Jessica Jocelyn, girl (remastered)
October is ADHD Awareness Month and November is Perinatal Mental Health Awareness Month. My son was born on the last day of October, and so it felt right to take this moment to reflect on my experience so far, of being a mother with ADHD.
If I had to list a top 5 major life events that turned my life upside down in the best way possible, becoming a mother would be number 1 and getting diagnosed with ADHD would be number 2.
It is somewhat ironic, as I often say these two events don’t completely define who I am as a person but both were completely Earth shaking events that sent me on journeys that helped me understand who I am, and who I used to be.
If you Google ADHD mother, you will find more discussion these days around what it feels like to be a mother/parent with ADHD. However, I still feel like a lot of the resources and discussions often pertain to neurotypical mothers with neurodivergent child.
We share some universal experiences of course; every mother can articulate how overstimulating it can be to be the carer of a small child. The term “touched out” is often used to describe the hours we spend contact napping, feeding, rocking, cuddling, carrying and holding our children. We get told that we must enjoy the cuddles, as though they are somewhat limited but at the same time we feel that our ability to be touched can deplete, leaving us feeling fatigued, claustrophobic or wild-eyed with irrational rage.
I can remember in the first few months of my son’s life, I would spend most of the days counting down until my husband came home so I could hand the baby over to him, and just lie down in a quiet room. I developed a ritual around my shower before bed as being the time for me to both quiet my brain and recover from the overstimulation, and feelings of being touched out.
I started showering in the dark, with just a dim night light on and it helped revive me. I often complain about how tired I am, but I often found myself scrolling on the internet and listening to music for hours after my son went to sleep. I later found out that this is called revenge procrastination and it is quite common amongst ADHD people but also….mothers. It is our brain’s way of clawing back some kind of space to do what we truly want to do after a day of not having that freedom but unfortunately it comes with the cost of sleep, something that would be far more beneficial.
I think one of the cruelest things that has ever happened to me was a former friend of mine, who funnily enough is neurodivergent too, making fun of me for being very open about the fact that I needed to learn how to be a mother. I look back on those first months, and maybe even that first year, and I was so scared and so afraid. But, even in my darkest periods of postpartum depression, I was self aware enough to know the reason why I was so unsure and I needed to research and seek out information was because ultimately, I wanted to be the best parent I could be for my child.
And not the best parent as in, a competition amongst other parents (which seems to definitely be a thing in some people’s heads once they have a baby). But I wanted to be the best parent I could be to *my* child; I knew from the outset that my child was a person of their own.
Yes, he was made of my flesh and his blood was once mine. I sometimes look at him now and I see my features in his, my personality in glimpses of his. However, he is a person of his own and this was something that I was not only cognisant of from his birth but it was the one underlying parental philosophy and instinct I had from the beginning.
I think some people found this confronting. They found it confronting that I was very open that I was struggling with parenthood because at times it felt like I just hadn’t read the right book or paper or story that told me how to be a mother.
I was quite isolated. I tried very hard to befriend other new mothers, but I just couldn’t find my people. I spent a lot of time on Instagram and Reddit, and fell down a rabbit hole.
My experience of navigating social media directed towards mothers did help me form more solid understandings of the type of parent I was, but not because I gained inspiration or found things that resonated with me.
In fact, it was the opposite. I formed a lot of my sense of self as a mother and how I wanted to parent because I found the things I was consuming on social media so frustrating and at times repulsive. Maybe it was just my algorithm, but I was constantly bombarded with messaging that basically amounted to:
If you want to be a good mother, you must suffer.
And it didn’t seem to matter what the topic was. Feeding? You must push through breastfeeding even if you are completely depleted and sleep deprived. Sleep? You either must teach your baby how to self settle even if they can’t do it, or you must cosleep next to your child because putting them in a crib is letting them know that you aren’t coming to get them.
Screens? Don’t be lazy, you decided to have this kid. You will rot their brains with dancing fruit even if it means you can’t shower, eat or even just step out of the room to take a breath.
Crying? Are you some kind of monster? How can you be okay with letting your baby cry so you can take that breather, or so you can try to lie down for a second and hope the baby stops so you can rest. How can you listen to them cry, my heart can’t take it?
It can be really easy for a mother who has gotten out of those newborn trenches to look back and tell newer mothers to ignore the noise and reassure them that they know their baby best. These are words often said in kindness, and I think it could be better phrased as I wish I didn’t listen to other people, and you don’t need to listen to other people.
Because when you are alone, in the middle of the night or you are pushing your pram around the streets during the day, you may find yourself wondering how can I do this or what do I do? And the algorithm is right there, and it will either reward your wired and tired brain or punish it.
I felt a sense of exclusion that was familiar to me, as a neurodivergent girl then woman. I felt an overwhelming desire to feel kinship and to be part of a group of people. I just wanted to feel like other “normal” mothers.
I still find it very hard to describe how difficult it was for me in that period where I felt like I didn’t even know how to kiss and cuddle my child, to have to constantly hear other people wondering why I didn’t have an “instinct” like they did or hear people talking about how much they love newborns and infants, and that I needed to enjoy every moment of being touched out, highly strung and overstimulated because this was the peak enjoyment of being a mother and somehow, my child would never be as close to me as he was then.
It just felt like another reminder that I wasn’t normal, I wasn’t like other mothers and this was compounded by people commenting on how weird it was that I needed to research how to do things that seemed intuitive to them.
As time has gone on, I have been able to shake off that feeling. Part of it is just experience gained over time, but also I can now look back with the benefit of hindsight.
I think one of the main things that influenced my feeling of isolation and disconnect was that I just simply am not a “baby person”. I struggled a lot with understanding cues, and I often describe the first 12 months as being like someone gave me a noisy potato and expected me to immediately know what to do.
People often describe birthing a child as being akin to love at first sight. I heard so many stories of women describing that immediate rush of love but my experience felt more like a slow burning love story where we were figuring each other out.
I think I am definitely more of a toddler person. I think one of my gifts as an neurodivergent person has been the empathy that I can share with my child when he has a meltdown or a tantrum. Because even as an adult, I know all too well the feeling of being overwhelmed by “big” emotions and having a difficult time regulating them.
I can imagine what it could feel like to feel something for the first time, or be confronted by an emotion that is so big, so heavy and yet I struggle to identify it.
I get so much joy from seeing my boy discover things for the first time, and from seeing him take each step towards becoming his own person even if it means this is a step away from me.
He is so funny, and sweet. I am in awe of how emotionally intelligent he is, and how intuitive he is in social situations. Of how caring he is towards his peers.
I also realise now that there are plenty of people who aren’t born mothers, they are made into mothers and that my urge to seek out information isn’t something I should have ever felt shame about.
Even though I thought at the time that I had no instinct and as a result, this was yet another defect, I can recognise the inherent urge and desire I had to find out who my child was and to let that shape the type of mother I wanted to be.
It is very easy to list everything that is hard about being a neurodivergent mother, but I think my final point is, at the same time, it is helping me understand my child and his experience of the world but also gives me confidence in being able to state confidently that I don’t have many of the answers, but I will search to the ends of the world for these answers so I can be the mother my child needs.